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Lying on her bed she breathed into her pillow and dreamed of how nice it would be to go and buy the most expensive brooch and fling it into the face of this bullying woman. If only it were God's will that Fedosya Vassilyevna should come to ruin and wander about begging, and should taste all the horrors of poverty and dependence, and that Mashenka, whom she had insulted, might give her alms!
"Madame Kushkin is in a fit, most likely, or else she has quarrelled with her husband," thought Mashenka. In the hall and in the corridor she met maid-servants. One of them was crying. Then Mashenka saw, running out of her room, the master of the house himself, Nikolay Sergeitch, a little man with a flabby face and a bald head, though he was not old. He was red in the face and twitching all over.
They called in a matchmaker at once, the women got to talking of one thing and another, and Vasya went off to have a look at the girls. He picked out Mashenka, a widow's daughter. They made up their minds without loss of time and in a week it was all settled.
Her parents lived far away in the provinces; they had not the money to come to her. In the capital she was as solitary as in a desert, without friends or kindred. They could do what they liked with her. "I will go to all the courts and all the lawyers," Mashenka thought, trembling. "I will explain to them, I will take an oath. . . . They will believe that I could not be a thief!"
I . . . I upset it accidentally. . . . My sleeve caught in it. . ." And saying something more, Madame Kushkin rustled her long skirts and went out. Mashenka looked round her room with wondering eyes, and, unable to understand it, not knowing what to think, shrugged her shoulders, and turned cold with dismay. What had Fedosya Vassilyevna been looking for in her work-bag?
Kuzka he was three years old was crawling on the floor, munching the gingerbreads, while Mashenka stood by the stove, white and shivering all over, muttering: 'I'm not your wife; I can't live with you, and all sorts of foolishness.
She felt hot all over, and was ashamed at the thought that her little secret was known to the lady of the house; and all this terror, shame, resentment, brought on an attack of palpitation of the heart, which set up a throbbing in her temples, in her heart, and deep down in her stomach. "Dinner is ready," the servant summoned Mashenka. "Shall I go, or not?"
I said: 'Good-evening, Marya Semyonovna! She did not speak. And Vasya was sitting in the next room, his head in his hands, crying and saying: 'Brute that I am! I've ruined my life! O God, let me die! I sat for half an hour by Mashenka and gave her a good talking-to. I tried to frighten her a bit.
There is perfect stillness in the air, and an unpleasant smell of freshly cut hay. I take up my hat and try to get away. "I have something I must say to you!" Mashenka whispers to me significantly, "don't go away!" I have a foreboding of evil, but politeness obliges me to remain. Mashenka takes my arm and leads me away to a garden walk. By this time her whole figure expresses conflict.
"Why should you worry yourself?" "Of course, no. . . . But still, don't you . . . go away. I entreat you." Mashenka shook her head. Nikolay Sergeitch stopped at the window and drummed on the pane with his finger-tips. "Such misunderstandings are simply torture to me," he said. "Why, do you want me to go down on my knees to you, or what?
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